Shieldpay

Shieldpay is an FCA-authorised (firm reference 770210) payments platform built for the UK legal and professional-services sector, offering a regulated alternative to holding client money in traditional client accounts. It combines KYC/due-diligence verification of parties, safeguarding of funds with tier-1 banking partners (Citi and ClearBank), and audited disbursement of payments, supporting M&A holdbacks/earnouts and shareholder distributions, multi-claimant litigation settlements, escrow, conveyancing, and ongoing client-money management via its Third-Party Managed Account (TPMA) service. Shieldpay has processed over £18 billion and serves 40+ of the UK top-100 law firms. Its Partner API lets integrators programmatically create projects, manage payers and payees, run KYC, and authorise payments; the API secures every request with mutual TLS, an API key, an RSA-SHA256 request signature, a v4-UUID RequestID for idempotency, and IP whitelisting, and delivers real-time events over webhooks.

Shieldpay publishes 1 API on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Payments, Escrow, Legal Technology, and Fintech.

The Shieldpay catalog on APIs.io includes 1 event-driven AsyncAPI specification.

Shieldpay’s developer surface includes documentation, API reference, getting-started guide, engineering blog, support, authentication, sandbox, and 21 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub
47.3/100 developing ▬ flat Agent 39/100 agent aware Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
AccessSelf serve
1 APIs
CompanyPaymentsEscrowLegal TechnologyFintechComplianceKYCBanking

Kin Score

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
Composite quality — 47.3/100 · developing
Contract Quality 5.7 / 25
Developer Ergonomics 11.7 / 20
Commercial Clarity 10.0 / 20
Operational Transparency 5.1 / 13
Governance 0.0 / 12
Discoverability 9.3 / 10
Agent readiness — 39/100 · agent aware
Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 0 / 15
MCP Server 0 / 12
Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10
Idempotency 9 / 9
Stable Error Semantics 8 / 8
Request/Response Examples 0 / 7
Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7
Typed Event Surface 6 / 6
Agent Skills 0 / 5
Well-Known Catalog 4 / 4
Consent & Bot Identity 3 / 3
Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/shieldpay: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Want it done for you? Prioritized profiling — $2,500 →

APIs 1

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Shieldpay Partner API

REST API to manage payment workflows end to end — create projects, manage payers and payees, run KYC verification, and authorise payments to disburse funds securely. Secured wit...

Event Specifications 1

AsyncAPI definitions for this provider's event-driven and streaming APIs.

Shieldpay Webhooks

ASYNCAPI

Security Posture 4

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Shieldpay Authentication

mutualTLS/apiKey/requestSignature · 4 schemes

SECURITY

Shieldpay Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Shieldpay Vulnerability Disclosure

security.txt · contact published

SECURITY

Shieldpay Trust Center

ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials, FIPS 140-2

SECURITY

Resources

Get Started 4

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

DeveloperPortal
DeveloperPortal
 GettingStarted
GettingStarted
 Login
Login
 Sandbox
Sandbox

Documentation 2

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation
Documentation
 APIReference
APIReference

Agent Surfaces 2

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

WellKnown
WellKnown
 LLMsTxt
LLMsTxt

Design & Contract 6

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Conventions
Conventions
 Idempotency
Idempotency
 ErrorCatalog
ErrorCatalog
 Webhooks
Webhooks
 Lifecycle
Lifecycle
 Conformance
Conformance

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization
GitHubOrganization

Access & Security 7

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

Authentication
Authentication
 SecurityTxt
SecurityTxt
 Compliance
Compliance
 VulnerabilityDisclosure
VulnerabilityDisclosure
 Security
Security
 TrustCenter
TrustCenter
 DomainSecurity
DomainSecurity

Scroll for all 7

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Support
Support
 StatusPage
StatusPage

Commercial 2

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

TermsOfService
TermsOfService
 PrivacyPolicy
PrivacyPolicy

Company 2

The organization behind the API

Website
Website
 Blog
Blog

Source (apis.yml)

apis.yml Raw ↑ 
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-21'
  status: enriched
  artifacts_added: 13
  pass: local-v1
aid: shieldpay
name: Shieldpay
description: Shieldpay is an FCA-authorised (firm reference 770210) payments platform built for the UK legal and professional-services
  sector, offering a regulated alternative to holding client money in traditional client accounts. It combines KYC/due-diligence
  verification of parties, safeguarding of funds with tier-1 banking partners (Citi and ClearBank), and audited disbursement
  of payments, supporting M&A holdbacks/earnouts and shareholder distributions, multi-claimant litigation settlements, escrow,
  conveyancing, and ongoing client-money management via its Third-Party Managed Account (TPMA) service. Shieldpay has processed
  over £18 billion and serves 40+ of the UK top-100 law firms. Its Partner API lets integrators programmatically create projects,
  manage payers and payees, run KYC, and authorise payments; the API secures every request with mutual TLS, an API key, an
  RSA-SHA256 request signature, a v4-UUID RequestID for idempotency, and IP whitelisting, and delivers real-time events over
  webhooks.
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/shieldpay/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: self-serve
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Self-serve signup
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - authentication
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://d24lr4zqs1tgqh.cloudfront.net/69dd90cd-7657-4b6d-8bb5-361a7e0d99d6.png
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- techstars
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: portfolio-lead
specificationVersion: '0.20'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-21'
tags:
- Company
- Payments
- Escrow
- Legal Technology
- Fintech
- Compliance
- KYC
- Banking
apis:
- name: Shieldpay Partner API
  description: REST API to manage payment workflows end to end — create projects, manage payers and payees, run KYC verification,
    and authorise payments to disburse funds securely. Secured with mTLS + API key + RSA-SHA256 request signing, v4-UUID RequestID
    idempotency, timestamp and IP-whitelist controls, with real-time webhook events.
  humanURL: https://developers.shieldpay.com/
  baseURL: https://api.partner.shieldpay.com
  version: v1
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://developers.shieldpay.com/
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://developers.shieldpay.com/api-reference
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://developers.shieldpay.com/getting-started
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://shieldpay.com/
- type: DeveloperPortal
  url: https://developers.shieldpay.com/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://developers.shieldpay.com/
- type: APIReference
  url: https://developers.shieldpay.com/api-reference
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://developers.shieldpay.com/getting-started
- type: Blog
  url: https://www.shieldpay.com/blog
- type: Support
  url: https://www.shieldpay.com/contact-us
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/shieldpay
- type: Login
  url: https://ent.shieldpay.com/
- type: TermsOfService
  url: https://www.shieldpay.com/terms-of-use
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://www.shieldpay.com/privacy-notice
- type: StatusPage
  url: https://status.shieldpay.com/
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/shieldpay-authentication.yml
- type: Conventions
  url: conventions/shieldpay-conventions.yml
- type: Idempotency
  url: conventions/shieldpay-conventions.yml
- type: ErrorCatalog
  url: errors/shieldpay-problem-types.yml
- type: Webhooks
  url: asyncapi/shieldpay-webhooks.yml
- type: Sandbox
  url: sandbox/shieldpay-sandbox.yml
- type: Lifecycle
  url: lifecycle/shieldpay-lifecycle.yml
- type: WellKnown
  url: well-known/shieldpay-well-known.yml
- type: SecurityTxt
  url: well-known/shieldpay-security.txt
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/shieldpay-conformance.yml
- type: Compliance
  url: conformance/shieldpay-conformance.yml
- type: VulnerabilityDisclosure
  url: security/shieldpay-vulnerability-disclosure.yml
- type: Security
  url: https://www.shieldpay.com/security/vulnerability-disclosure-policy
- type: TrustCenter
  url: security/shieldpay-trust-center.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/shieldpay-domain-security.yml
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/shieldpay-llms.txt